I Deserve This, Thank You

By Lynn Melnick

Winner of The American Poetry Review's Stern Prize, Lynn Melnick's fierce new collection celebrates the hard-earned wisdom and unruly power of midlife.

In I Deserve This, Thank You, Lynn Melnick offers a stinging, wry, and deeply personal exploration of womanhood over fifty. Building on her career-long engagement with feminist themes--including violence against women, bodily autonomy, and the complexities of motherhood--these poems turn their focus to a demographic too often rendered invisible by a youth-obsessed culture, using robust, precise language to dismantle outdated illusions.

Rooted in the author's formative years in Los Angeles, these poems confront the glittering, often hollow influence of Hollywood while delving into the raw, shadowed terrain of womanhood, motherhood, and political survival. This is not a polite reflection on aging but an inventive, forthright reckoning with the strength, anger, and resilience that come with time. Melnick looks inward with startling honesty, navigating the complicated triumphs and painful failures of motherhood while questioning how a single citizen engages with a fractured world.

I Deserve This, Thank You is a collection for anyone willing to trade comfortable lies for hard-won truths, proving that the perspective of the older woman is not merely relevant--it is essential.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H9QQ8RWF
• ISBN13: 9798987585283
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: American Poetry Review